SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

BIGWIG: Shareholders these days are worried about investments in star vehicles that are unproven commodities. Therefore, I have decided that all of our projects for the next six months will come from one-word trademarked items with significant visibility. One, begin development on “Cable,” “Hilton,” and “Steakums.”FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: You know, “Popeye” is only one word and it’s a visibility.THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I think you mean “trademark.”FIRST: No, I mean “Popeye.” Who would go to see Trademark: The Movie?BIGWIG: Adventurous idea, One. Three, shop Trademark: The Movie around to indie directors. Maybe Spike Jonze can do something that ironic hipsters will enjoy.THIRD: Am I shopping anything else around? “Alka-Seltzer,” perhaps?BIGWIG: That is technically two words, as is “Pepto-Bismol.” However, see what you can do with “Xantac.”FIRST: Oooooh ooooh make it a robot! With laser vision! I’ll trade you “Steakums” for it!BIGWIG: No trades. Three, you will also get “Oz.” I recommend combining the HBO prison drama with the Baum books. That way, we get two audiences at once.THIRD: That’s… actually interesting.BIGWIG: You’re welcome. Now, you’re going to help Two out on his assignment.SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Oh, come on. Is this is because of what happened with Anne Hathaway?BIGWIG: This is exactly because of what happened with Anne Hathaway.FIRST: I hear she still walks with a limp.SECOND: It wasn’t my fault she crashed that Porsche into that other Porsche that the drug dealer was driving at us at full speed because I convinced him that baking soda was cocaine.BIGWIG: Nonetheless. Two, you have “Pledge,” “Tweety,” and “Marmaduke.”SECOND: Okay, I get that Pledge is clearly a movie about sorority hazing involving floor wax, and Tweety is a sex comedy involving Twitter in some fashion, like maybe Kate Hudson is a girl who’s afraid of commitment and loves shoe shopping, so she breaks up with guys via Twitter while she goes shoe shopping, but then she falls in love with a hunky programmer who works for Twitter –THREE: There are hunky programmers?SECOND: We can get Dane Cook to play one.THREE: Of course.SECOND: But what the hell am I supposed to do with “Marmaduke”? Nobody loves Marmaduke if they’re under the age of eighty. I mean, I like some questionable things, sure, but even I don’t like Marmaduke.FIRST: I don’t like it either.SECOND: There you go! See? The guy who wrote most of Anthony Anderson’s dialogue in Kangaroo Jack is too intellectual for Marmaduke. This one is impossible, boss. I say we give it to Uwe Boll and back away slowly.BIGWIG: We spent a lot of money acquiring the rights to make Marmaduke. Stop whining and come up with a multimillion-dollar film franchise. What do I pay you for again?SECOND: …can we have Marmaduke have sex with a lady?BIGWIG: No.SECOND: Okay, I’m out of ideas.THIRD: Wow, you didn’t even mention whores once.SECOND: I know!FIRST: I have an idea!(A pause.)BIGWIG: Yes…?FIRST: Let’s have Marmaduke talk! That’s what brings this movie into the 21st century! He can be all “I’m a dog, and I’m talking.”BIGWIG: Does he talk to humans, or to animals, or to the audience, or what?FIRST: I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.THIRD: Didn’t Look Who’s Talking Now bomb?FIRST: I don’t know what that is!BIGWIG: You forget, Three, that nowadays we have computers. We can use computers to make the dogs’ mouths move so it looks like they are actually talking. Children love this.THREE: They don’t find it kind of creepy?BIGWIG:Children love this.THREE: I see.FIRST: So Marmaduke can talk about dog stuff. Like, how much he likes pooping, and how much he likes eating, and then pooping, and sleeping, and pooping…SECOND: Wait wait wait. Isn’t Marmaduke, in the cartoons, really huge? And he does all this stuff because he’s so big?BIGWIG: Yes. So?SECOND: In real life Great Danes don’t quite get as big as Marmaduke is in the cartoon.THIRD: My god, are you actually making a cogent observation?SECOND: I dated a professional dog breeder a while back.THIRD: You dated a woman? More than once?SECOND: Okay, it wasn’t a breeder, it was a Kardashian. But she really, really loved dogs. She wouldn’t shut up about dogs. Or maybe it was hats. Same thing, really.BIGWIG: This is a fine point, Two, but again. We will fix that with computers.THREE: We’ll make the dog larger with computers?BIGWIG: Of course not. We’ll just have him do all the Marmaduke things and be a normal-sized Great Dane, and anything that’s especially physical, we just do it without the dog and CGI in a dog in post. Honestly, Three. Do I need to explain computers to you now?FIRST: Also maybe we could have all the dogs dance in a dance routine with computers!SECOND: Wait, wait – maybe dog society can be just like high school! People love it when shit is like high school!THIRD: I guess we could throw in a talking cat. If we have talking dogs, we can have a cat as well. Some people like cats better than dogs.BIGWIG: Gentlemen, this is what I call development. Who can we get to star?THIRD: I think William H. Macy owes me a favour.FIRST: Will he let us kick him in the nuts?THIRD: I’m just going to assume you meant in the movie.FIRST: Of course I meant in the movie. I’m not stupid, you know.BIGWIG: We all know that, One.FIRST: So, how many times will we kick him in the nuts? Fifteen, or twenty? I say twenty. It’s funnier that way! Just imagine him getting kicked again and again and again!THREE: I think his limit per movie is two.FIRST: Aw. What if he gets headbutted in the nuts by a dog instead?THREE: Still two.BIGWIG: We’ll make it work. Still, we need somebody famous to be the voice of Marmaduke. Who can we get?THREE: Jon Stewart?BIGWIG: Too self-conscious.SECOND: Leonardo DiCaprio?BIGWIG: Threatened to set us on fire if we contacted him ever again.FIRST: Vince Vaughn! Vince Vaughn! He can say “poop” in so many different ways!BIGWIG: Not bad, but he doesn’t owe us any favours. Wait a second. Two, can you contact Owen Wilson?SECOND: Great thinking, boss! I’ve still got those incriminating pictures from the set of Marley and Me! We’ll get him to –THIRD: Why don’t we just pay him instead? It’s not like he has standards.BIGWIG: Because we want to save money. Offer him half his going rate plus the negatives, Two.SECOND: Will do.BIGWIG: Well, it looks like this has come together. Good work, everybody.FIRST: My turn! My turn! So, I’m thinking Steakums can be like Transformers, except that instead of being robots, they’re made of ground meat product…

Marmaduke is the mind-killer.
Marmaduke is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face Marmaduke.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the Marmaduke has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Words cannot express my horror that they have managed to turn this into a feature film.

That said, I’ve got five bucks saying the next horrifying movie we get will be ‘Family Circus’. Then… I’m not sure. Maybe Blondie? I actually enjoy Blondie sometimes (I sympathise with the taking of naps and eating of large sandwiches), but I really can’t see it becoming a feature film. In fact, I’m almost certain that they’d make a horrible feature film of it, unless they took it back to the early thirties and had it follow the only character progression the strip ever had.

If they did a Blondie origins movie (with all of the Great Depression era stuff about Dagwood choosing love over his inheritance and then seeing the consequences of that), it could be interesting.

Which, of course, means they will never do that.
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A “Luann” movie strikes me as something Hollywood might actually consider. Which would suck, because it would heavily feature Luann, who is by far the least interesting character in the strip.

I could see Takeshi Kitano pulling off a straight version of Funky Winkerbean, though for something like FBoFW you’d really need to bring back Kubrick or Hitchcock, though maybe speilberg could get away with a few scenes where Elly and her daughter are hiding from her mother and they both have to be very quiet and still to avoid being killed.

Does anyone else think an independently produced Get Fuzzy movie could be good? You would have to keep the Hollywood establishment as far away from it as possible for it to have a chance, but it could be fun.

The thing is, if anybody really wanted to see a true-to-source “Marmaduke” movie, they already made “Beethoven” like 20 years ago. It’s a movie about a big dog who gets into trouble because he’s a big dog who gets into trouble. Shakespeare it ain’t, but I don’t know what you do if someone’s already made your movie (besides, you know, making a movie from a different property entirely).

Tweety is a sex comedy involving Twitter in some fashion, like maybe Kate Hudson is a girl who’s afraid of commitment and loves shoe shopping, so she breaks up with guys via Twitter while she goes shoe shopping, but then she falls in love with a hunky programmer who works for Twitter –